calendars

Sports start next week. Women's soccer starts next Friday with a home game versus Arkansas. Get, uh… excited? I'll be trying to get a small preview out next weekend to give a brief overview of the soccer teams. If you consider yourself a Michigan soccer fan and would like to give me a general overview or insight on where to start with the team, drop a line at formerlyanonymous (at the) gmail.com type emails.

Downloadables: For those of you interested in an electronic calendar for Michigan Athletics, I've made them available for each of the sports who have announced their schedules thus far. As more schedules become available, I'll look to release those as well. These are "ical" files, which can be used in MS Outlook, google calendar, and many other calendar programs including those that can sync with your phone. I'll also update these throughout the season as game times are either changed or announced.

There are more schedules that haven't been released yet (x-country, golf, etc), but I'll have those available a little later down the road. Also, remember some game times haven't been announced yet. I plan to update those as the season goes along, but that will require you to update your file(s).

Watchables: The BigTenNetwork has announced their TV schedule for most of the 6 sports listed above. Michigan is slated for 9 non-football broadcast on the BTN with an opportunity to gain a 10th. The breakdown is as follows:

M Soccer

W Soccer

Volleyball

Field Hockey

Team Total

Michigan

3

1

3

2

9

Illinois

3

5

8

Indiana

4

2

2

1

9

Iowa

1

2

2

5

Michigan State

4

3

3

2

12

Minnesota

2

5

7

Northwestern

2

1

3

1

7

Ohio State

2

1

3

2

8

Penn State

2

2

6

2

12

Purdue

1

4

5

Wisconsin

2

1

2

5

SPORTTOTALS:

16

17

35

10

78

Michigan also has a good shot of landing the November 28th game at Penn State on the BTN as that date has been listed as a "wild card" to be announced later. The home match versus PSU is already reserved for ESPN (although taped delayed by 2 days), so I wouldn't be surprised if the BTN shows the road game. Penn State is a powerhouse that held on to the #1 ranking in American since October 29, 2007. The one thing that may keep it from being on BTN is Penn State already having more televised games than any other volleyball team. They also have a pair of ESPN matches as well. I could see the BTN trying to keep fair coverage of other teams available.

Volleyball is also going to be on CBS College Sports for the Runza/AVCA Tournament to start the year. The tournament is being held in Omaha, NE and is more or less hosted by volleyball juggernaut Nebraska. We face the Huskers in the first game and Kansas State, another team that is consistently ranked, in the second game.

As far as BTN coverage as a whole, I'm perpetually disappointed by how little is shown. If you can stream half of the women's basketball games, I think you could potentially stream a lot else. The streaming page for the BTN has been temporarily disabled as they plan for the upcoming school year. The only shreds of hope for a sports channel actually showing more sports comes from the BTN.com FAQ:

OLYMPIC SPORTS:

Other sports such as baseball, field hockey, soccer, softball, volleyball and wrestling have enjoyed major upgrades in television coverage. All of these sports had previously received little to no television coverage. During the first year of the Big Ten Network, more than 170 Olympic sport events and 17 Big Ten Championships were televised to a national audience. Nearly every event was produced in high definition. The network has future plans to augment that level of coverage by streaming hundreds of additional events in the future that would not have previously received television coverage.

Emphasis is mine. They go on to mention games like baseball, wrestling, and softball being streamed. It seems that they're still not quite ready to stream fall events.